


grey areas and expectations.

by katarama



Series: leave this blue neighborhood. [7]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Drug Use, Flashbacks, Frame - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Memory Lapses from Overmedication, Overmedication, Panic Attacks, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 00:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10651431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Everyone always talks like Kent was the reckless one, and sometimes he was.  Sometimes he was so reckless it worried Jack.  But there were more moments when he wasn’t.  There were lots and lots of moments where Kent was the one alert when Jack wasn’t.  When Kent was scrambling to do his best to help, even when he didn’t always understand the problem.  When Jack was drunk or high and Kent was the only person keeping him in one piece.Jack isn’t even sure that Kent was ever aware of how much he did to help.





	grey areas and expectations.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  **If you're new to this series, start[HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10586022).**

**January 2018 (with a flashback to 2008)**

 

 

“Are you actually gonna go out there with that douchebag?” Snowy asks.  

It’s a real question.  Jack has been running it through his head himself.  He knows what the answer is.  What the answer should be, at least.  When Jack told Kent that he should go ahead outside and that Jack would meet him in a few, it was with every intention to actually head outside in a few minutes.  He just wanted a tiny bit of a breather, a chance to collect himself before he charged into this.

Now that Kent is gone, now that Jack watched him weave through people like crowds meant nothing to him, Jack has a choice.  It would be easy to call it a night now and head home, to be that dick who told Kent to go outside and then left to avoid a confrontation.

“Yeah,” Jack says.  “I’m gonna go out there with him.  I said I would.”

“What’s even his deal?” Snowy asks as he pours himself another shot of vodka.  Jack is tempted to pour a shot or two for himself, but he thinks that actually doing it might be the bad decision to topple what is turning into a bad decision jenga.  “I mean, like, why the fuck does he hate you so much?”

For a second, Jack doesn’t know how to respond.  No one on his team has actually asked him to his face what happened with him and Kent.  Not in a way he felt obligated to answer, at least.  He’s dodged plenty of reporters on questions about Kent.  His teammates, especially Tater, have dodged answering questions about Kent.

Though, admittedly, Tater doesn’t have much to dodge related to Jack and Kent.  He’s picked fights with Kent in his own right.

But no one’s actually asked.  Even his own team has assumed, based on what they’ve seen on ESPN and what they’ve read online.  It’s no secret that they used to be teammates and best friends.  It’s no secret that the OD happened and the draft happened.  It’s definitely no secret that Kent won the Calder and the Stanley Cup playing for what was basically a shitty, bottom of the barrell expansion team before he showed up.  

Maybe Jack just exuded such an air of “don’t ask” related to Kent that no one ever tried.  Jack would be okay with that.

If Snowy were Shitty, this is the point where Jack might laugh, say that Kent hating him is the exact opposite of the problem.  But Jack isn’t with Shitty, though he has his phone in his hands, is carefully typing out a message that may or may not worry Shitty later.

Snowy isn’t Shitty.  Jack can’t just say what he means when it comes to Kent, for both his and Kent’s sakes.

“I’ll tell you later sometime,” Jack finally says as he presses send.  “Maybe.  It’s a long story.”

Jack’s phone starts vibrating in his hands.  There’s a new text from Shitty with way too many capital letters, and then a call from Shitty that Jack hangs up before it goes to voicemail.

“I’m gonna head outside,” Jack says.  “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“You know how to get an Uber,” Snowy replies.  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

It’s all the permission Jack needs to ditch this club after surviving this conversation with Kent.

If he survives this conversation with Kent.

* * *

Jack and Kent didn’t do clubs, when they were younger.  Clubs were expensive and always checked IDs, and clubs were public.  Being in the major juniors didn’t make them that big of a deal, not even in Canada.  But Jack was still his parents’ child, still a Zimmermann, and there was a one out of ten chance that he would get recognized by someone.

Part of the reason they stayed away from clubs, in particular, was also this.  The flashing lights and the music and the crowds.  There wasn’t anything about clubs that wasn't stressful and overwhelming for Jack.

Jack and Kent did go once.  They went together.  They were almost eighteen, and it was one of the older guys on the team’s birthday.  They got let into the club, but they got bright red stamps on their hands showing that they were underage and weren’t allowed to drink.  Jack didn’t care that he wasn’t going to sneak by on the booze front, because he had pills in his pocket, just in case.

He made it through the first part of the night just fine.  But then the jokes about finding Jack a girl to fuck started up.  Jack had shrugged it off like he always did at first, until one of the guys started getting really adamant and started looking at girls to bring over.  Started joking about going up to one girl in particular and making Jack talk to her, started making cracks about how if Jack didn’t get laid soon, he’d have to take matters into his own hands.  Jack didn’t know what it was, didn’t know whether it was the wrong phrasing or the wrong day, or the way Kent was biting his lip to avoid saying anything, or what, but it made everything bad bubble up in his chest, made him start to panic and.

“Outside,” Kent whispered in his ear.  “I’ll cover for you.”

Jack remembers the way just a tiny bit of the tension slipped from his shoulders, the relief in knowing that Kent had things taken care of.  He remembers hearing Kent talking to the guys, making some sort of pointed comment about when the last time was that the guy actually managed to even get himself laid, talking about girls like that.  Jack remembers waiting until everyone was distracted and then holding up his phone, acting like he had to take a call.  

He remembers stopping in the bathroom and downing pills with water from the sink.  

He remembers there was an exit that led outside around the back, the entire area smelling of cigarettes.  He remembers sitting there and waiting for the meds to kick in, his body so tight that his back ached and his jaw clenched now matter how many times he tried to loosen it.  He remembers the relief flooding in when he finally started to feel the drugs working, remembers feeling looser and more relaxed when Kent came outside to find him sitting on the ground with his back against the brick wall of the building.  He remembers smiling up at Kent like everything was good and remembers Kent plopping down next to him.

“You okay?” Kent had asked, and Jack didn’t take it seriously.  He made a joke about being okay now that Kent was there.  It made Kent smile a little bit, though Jack recognizes now that it was Kent’s worried smile.  At the time, it made Jack grin.  

But Jack doesn’t remember pieces of that night.  The night was all there.  He remembers that it happened.  But a lot of what is there is glazed over, like he watched it happen through a layer of gauze.  He took too many of the panic attack anti-anxiety meds, the benzos, instead of the everyday ones.  He was tired.  

He remembers his head on Kent’s shoulder.  He remembers Kent’s hand running through his hair.  He remembers wanting to stay out there, sitting on the ground, in the remnants of other people’s cigarette butts, because the world was quiet there, with the smell of Kent’s body wash in his nose and the alleyway lit by the gentle glow of the single light above the door back into the club.  

He knows he went back inside with his phone in his hand, Kent talking things over.  He knows that Kent made excuses, though Jack can’t remember what excuses he made.  Probably something about Jack’s mom needing them home.  That was their usual excuse for when they wanted some alone time.  Jack knows that Kent dragged him away from that club and that Kent called his billet family and said he was bunking with Jack that night.  

He knows that Kent must have got him home, though he doesn’t remember that part of the night very well at all.  He remembers nearly dozing off in a car.  He remembers Kent having him drink a lot of water even though he wasn’t drunk.  He doesn’t think that Kent knew he wasn’t drunk.  Not being able to buy drinks didn’t always stop Jack’s teammates from passing them along.  Jack doesn’t remember telling Kent it wasn’t booze.

He knows he must have asked Kent to stay, but he doesn’t remember the words he used.  He doesn’t remember how he said them, whether they came out soft or slurred or desperate, practically begging.  He doesn’t know how much desperation he would’ve really been capable of at that point.  

Jack just remembers how nice it felt when he got his shoes and his jeans off and laid down on his soft mattress with another warm body next to him.  With Kent next to him.  Kent, who had smoothed things over and watched his back and kissed his forehead like Jack was worth a single ounce of affection.

Now, it’s all pretty mortifying.  The losing time.  The impulse to take extra doses of his meds to get through what should’ve been a pretty straightforward night out with his teammates.  The fact that Kent was the only person who probably noticed that anything was actually wrong, and the fact that Jack was so unable to communicate it on his own.

But tonight, at this club, as he weaves his way through the crowd of people to try to follow Kent’s path outside, it’s in the back of his head.  The way Kent was gentle with him.  The way Kent covered his ass when Jack was too out of it to be as careful as he should’ve.

Everyone always talks like Kent was the reckless one, and sometimes he was.  Sometimes he was so reckless it worried Jack.  But there were more moments when he wasn’t.  There were lots and lots of moments where Kent was the one alert when Jack wasn’t.  When Kent was scrambling to do his best to help, even when he didn’t always understand the problem.  When Jack was drunk or high and Kent was the only person keeping him in one piece.  Jack isn’t even sure that Kent was ever aware of how much he did to help.  How much he held everything together.  How much he soothed Jack when Jack’s chest was tight and his head only seemed to have room for terrifying things.

Shitty tries to call Jack again.

Jack answers this time.

“Brah, what the fuck was that?” Shitty demands, his voice so loud it’s audible even over the fading sounds of music from the club.  “You don’t just text me ‘I’m going to do something I shouldn’t’ and fuck off without responding.”

“I said that I wasn’t getting drunk,” Jack replies, like he thinks that’s acceptable.  They both know it’s not.  “Kent’s here.  I’m going to talk to him.”

There’s dead silence from the other end of the phone for a solid five seconds or so, and Jack starts to worry that maybe he should’ve used stronger language in his text.  

The nearly relieved, “You could’ve just said that.  You scared the shit out of me,” that he gets from Shitty undermines that train of thought.

“I’m talking to Kent.”

“You said that already," Shitty says.  His tone is more measured, more careful.  Reading Jack's concern.  "Nothing’s gone bad yet?  Your team’s still there, right?”

It says a lot to Jack.  That he’s the one that is so intensely nervous about this.  Shitty gets stuff wrong sometimes, and he doesn’t always react to things in a way that makes sense to Jack.  But he’s been the single steadiest person in Jack’s life in terms of weathering out everything to do with Kent Parson, and he has an uncanny ability to help filter through whether something is actually a crisis or whether it’s something that Jack is just up in his head about.

“I’m okay.  Nervous.  He just said he wanted to talk.  And he didn’t say anything scary or bad.  Snowy and Tater are still here,” Jack says, taking a deep breath.  He finds the door with a security guard next to it and an exit sign above it.  He waits inside to finish the call, ignoring the dirty look the guard is giving him.

“So not the ones who are good in a Parson kind of crisis,” Shitty says.  He isn’t wrong.  Jack thinks that Tater might be pretty okay in a panic attack situation, but he doesn’t really want to have to test it out to find out.  “Then I guess I just gotta remind you that you don’t have to do this if you don’t wanna.  You said yourself that you wanted to wait until you were ready.  Don’t force it if it’s stressing you out that much.  Take a breath and step out if you’re gonna be a fucker.  Or if he is.  If he's being a fucker, take care of yourself.  And I’m always here.”

“Isn’t it pretty late there?” Jack asks.  He doesn’t know exactly what time it is, but he’s positive that with the time difference, it is too late on the East Coast for Shitty to be fielding crisis calls.  “Shouldn’t you be asleep already?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, brah,” Shitty says.  “Call me if you need me.”

Jack says goodbye and hangs up, and once again, Jack is left with a choice.  It feels like more of a real choice, after talking to Shitty.  He can choose to remove himself from the situation.  He can choose to take a look at himself, at where he is and at how he’s feeling, and decide that he’s not in a good enough place to have this conversation with Kent.  To have… any conversation with Kent.  He can decide that he’s not ready.  Because it’s been… a lot of years.  Too many years.  Getting too close to a decade number of years.  But if there’s one thing that’s been drilled into his head by now, it’s that he can’t easily put a timeline on progress, that he can always be aware and always be working and still face setbacks, or slower growth than he’d like.  He can choose to grab an Uber home, because talking to Kent would be too much for him, and that might be the right choice for him, with the progress he's made.

Or he can choose to do this.  He can step outside and sit down next to Kent and have a conversation.  One they are both present for, both of them sober and aware.  One that Jack is afraid of, has been persistently avoiding because it leaves him just as full of guilt as it does anxiety and anger.  

Jack is nervous, but his head is clear.  And he’s afraid, but he also feels… ready.  Mostly.  Finally.  

“Thanks,” he texts Shitty.

He pockets his phone and opens the door.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://polyamorousparson.tumblr.com).


End file.
